


cherry pie (collected clydeland ficlets)

by IrisParry



Category: Crash Pad (2017), Logan Lucky (2017)
Genre: Clydeland, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, i feel like there should be a tag for 'kylux adjacent' ships, kylux adjacent, like a fandom tag
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-02-24 15:25:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13216623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrisParry/pseuds/IrisParry
Summary: Clydeland ficlets I wrote on tumblr, in response to prompts from a list. Putting them here by request, and for safekeeping (and the links I added to connect the original posts have stopped working, wtf tumblr??).  These three ended up sort of connecting to each other and I've put them here in story order, but I don't have any plans to make this a longer work. I'll add other ficlets here IF the inspiration hits.First one originally publishedhereon my tumblr, in response to anonymous prompt "are you flirting with me?"





	1. "Are you flirting with me?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clydeland ficlets I wrote on tumblr, in response to prompts from a list. Putting them here by request, and for safekeeping (and the links I added to connect the original posts have stopped working, wtf tumblr??). These three ended up sort of connecting to each other and I've put them here in story order, but I don't have any plans to make this a longer work. I'll add other ficlets here IF the inspiration hits. 
> 
> First one originally published [here](http://irisparry.tumblr.com/post/165944334304/clydeland-no56-or-111) on my tumblr, in response to anonymous prompt "are you flirting with me?"

“Are you flirting with me?”

It’s a funny sort of a question to ask with that sort of a look on your face, all screwed-up and despairing.

“It’s just,” the guy carries on, waving both his hands in front of him in that frantic sort of a gesture, the one that means a lot of things, that he’s mad about something, that he’s all enthusiastic about something, or that he’s looking real hard for a word, “It’s just that you’ve been talking to me a  _ lot _ , even more than you have those girls with the halter tops and the” - more hand waving - “you know, and it’s great and all but I’m very tired and probably a bit drunk and I can’t tell if you’re flirting with me or you’re just really really polite, and really really good at your job, and I don’t want to get punched if I try it back, because you’re really massive.” His hands drop back to the bar with a mildly alarming sense of finality. “So. Yeah.”

Clyde takes a moment to collect his thoughts.

It is, he concludes, not unreasonable to suggest that he has, indeed, spent a significant proportion of the evening at this corner of the bar. No other patrons have been done any discourtesy, of course. He’s cordially shot the shit with McCready at the far end while pouring him his fresh ones. The halter ladies pouted a little when it became clear he intended to remain on professional terms, but they left the counter laughing at a dumb joke he stole from Jimmy, and they keep coming back for more margaritas.

Clyde has not exactly been talking to the guy a lot, but he has been listening a lot. That’s what he prefers anyway. The guy has red hair and an accent and this sort of soft-looking smile sometimes and there are birds on his shirt. He’s interesting. He knows a lot about Dawson’s Creek. Even season five.

The guy is looking at him. His eyes are devoid of hope and his glass is devoid of liquor. Neither of those things will do, not at all.

Clyde clears his throat. “I have not,” he says, “To my knowledge, been flirting with you.”

“Oh god,” the guy whines, putting his face in his hands. “Please don’t punch me, you really are massive. Oh god, and I haven’t been looking at your massive chest to say that, I swear -“

“I am, however,” Clyde interrupts, thinking the better manners would be to do so on this occasion, before the guy digs himself any deeper down that misery hole, “About to commence doing so.”

The guy peers out from between his fingers. “What?”

“For the avoidance of any doubt.” Clyde takes his empty glass. “I’m going to. When I come back.”

“That’s. That’s very helpful.” When he drops his hands again, he’s doing that smile again.

Clyde nods, and the tips of his ears get hot, and he turns to the back row of bottles. The guy ordered neat bourbon when he first came in, made the twisty face every time he took a sip. It was torture to watch. He’s tried a couple things on Clyde’s suggestion since, though, so Clyde thinks he can guess at what he’ll like.

Splash of amaretto. Splash of bourbon. Glug of that cherry liqueur they don’t get much call for. Ice and bitters. Sweet and simple, and a very tasteful pink.

“So,” Clyde says, turning back with glass in hand. The guy is looking at him with a sort of terrified awe that the upcoming line does not warrant. They are where they are.

“Did it hurt,” Clyde says, carefully raising an eyebrow. “When you fell from heaven.”

The guy stares at him for a moment before the laughter collapses his face. It is a fine sight to see.

Clyde slides the glass over. “Cherry Pie,” he tells him.

The guy’s anxiety seems to be slipping off his shoulders. Clyde can’t exactly say the same as he watches him try the drink. He takes a sip, then makes a pleased little sound and a pleased little expression.

“That’s bloody gorgeous.” He leans an elbow on the bar, his head on his hand. “So,” he grins up at Clyde. “Now that we’re, you know. Flirting.” He takes another drink, smacks his lips. They’re really something, stained all pink. “Do you have any Irish in you?”


	2. "you have superpowers?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for another anonymous prompt from the list, "you have superpowers?" 
> 
> Originally published [here](http://irisparry.tumblr.com/post/166672382159/hey-clydeland-anon-remember-how-you-gave-me-2) on my tumblr.

“You have bloody - fucking - superpowers.” Stensland’s voice is muffled where he’s got his hands over his face. He hiccups and it sets him off laughing again, shaking the mattress.

Clyde is not thinking in words at the present moment. “Hurr,” he manages to reply. His face is starting to ache from lying here grinning up at the ceiling for Lord knows how long, seeing stars, actually seeing stars, stars dancing in front of his eyes like if he tried to stand up he’d drop right back down again, faint clean out.

“Honestly,” Stensland groans, the smile still in his voice, “I thought the arse stuff was just a  _ myth _ .” Smile in his voice, like when he’d been talking right up close against Clyde’s ear. That was - that was good, no other word for it. Just. Real good. “Like, I didn’t think it could possibly be that good, I just didn’t get it - “

Clyde rolls over and throws his arm across Stensland’s belly, where he’s soft and sweaty and still quivering. Quivering. God. “You sure got it,” he says, into his chest, tasting him where his lips press with the words, couldn’t give a damn for sounding dumb.

Stensland shakes with laughter again beneath him, one hand tangling Clyde’s hair and the other rooting between his own legs, adjusting things. His self-consciousness comes in waves, had him ordering the drink he didn’t care for, and pretending at experience with particular practices, but there’s something that wins through when he forgets to … not let it. His desire to please and be pleased was a different creature, when they were alone and his blood was up. There’s someone he can’t help but be.

Stensland is fidgeting, likely after getting up and to the bathroom, and Clyde has adjusting of his own to do, so he lifts off and drops onto his back again, feeling terribly heavy and floaty-light at the same time. It’s been a little while, and he’d almost forgotten the unique, exhausted energy of it. Stensland does indeed get to his feet, gradually and with mild complaining noises. He passes by to the bathroom with his hand coyly covering his parts, then only pushes the door to once he’s in there. The man is a walking contradiction.

Clyde drifts off a little. The sound of someone puttering around nearby, running water and tapping feet and tuneless humming, is comforting. His brain supplies a gentle re-run of the last hour or so, the little moments he’d loved best stretched out and swamping him with the deepest, warmest sense of satisfaction. Clyde does not, as a rule, do this. Take a good-looking guy home from the bar. Or, indeed, from anywhere, of late.

He’s certain, however, that this feeling is not only the relief of a thunderstorm after a drought. There was a lot, a lot, to recommend the experience, on its own merits. Enthusiasm. Creativity. Remarkable flexibility. Stensland’s behind is an especially pleasant surprise, hidden well under his corduroys. Clyde feels his face heat as he thinks about it, thinks terrible poetry about peaches and cream and whatever rhymes with pert and that’s when he kind of wakes himself up with a happy, easy burst of laughter.

Stensland pokes his head around the bathroom door. “Are you alright?”

Clyde pushes himself onto his elbow. “I really am.”

Stensland grins, edging round the bathroom door and out. He leans against the frame, looking as casual as it is possible to look while buck naked and cupping your parts, and he clears his throat purposefully.

“So,” he says, chin up, eyes not kept entirely on Clyde’s face. “Would you like to have another go?”

Clyde sits up. “Yes,” he says quickly, and a weak thrill of arousal rushes through him. “Uh. Maybe not, immediately, this moment?” He wants to, certainly, but it would be a little ambitious.

Stensland sits down on the edge of the bed, relief obvious in the sag of his shoulders. “Great. Excellent. Didn’t want to assume.” 

Well, there’s something gone on there, but it’s not for now. Clyde leans in and kisses his shoulder. “You can stay the whole night?” He swallows, thinks maybe the passivity of that is not what’s required. “I want you to.”

Stensland turns to kiss him, eager and smiling and tasting of Clyde’s toothpaste. The hand he holds Clyde’s face with is his cupping hand but it’s no matter at this stage of proceedings. Clyde wraps his arm around him and gently falls backward, taking Stensland with him.

“That thing with your tongue,” Stensland says, pulling back for air. “You like that? Do you want that?” Clyde nods, his words stealing away again. With Stensland on top all squirmy and keen and talking like this, immediately isn’t seeming all that ambitious anymore.


	3. "I swear my house is haunted."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [here](http://irisparry.tumblr.com/post/166500744519/clydeland-140-pretty-please) on my tumblr, in response to anon prompt "I swear my house is haunted."

“I swear,” Clyde says, because it’s the time of night when he can say it, his voice muffled against Stensland’s chest, everything they talk about unreal and hyper-real, low lights and soft talk, “I swear my house is haunted.”

It’s raining outside, lashing the house, winds rattling the window panes. Stensland’s breath rises and falls, steady, taking Clyde with it. Clyde’s been assured, in somewhat injured tones, that he’s not too heavy to lie like this, and he’s choosing to go on believing it.

Stensland’s fingers don’t stop curling through Clyde’s hair. “Haunted?” he says, eventually, sleepily, sounds like he’s got a little wrinkle in his brow.

Clyde tightens his good arm around Stensland’s waist. “Maybe.”

“It’s new build, isn’t it?”

“Yup.” New build, close to the bar. Finished about the same time Jimmy moved out to Lynchburg.

“It’s just,” Stensland says, fingertips in soft circles on Clyde’s scalp, “Aren’t haunted houses usually old and decrepit? Full of bats and cobwebs and all that?”

“Don’t know. Never been in one.” He frowns. “That I was aware of.”

Stensland shifts and Clyde looks up at him. He’s craning his neck off the pillow, eyes narrowed. Dark, stormy sea-green in the light from the one lamp. “Did you have this house built on an ancient burial ground?”

“No?”

Stensland raises an eyebrow.

“Absolutely not.” That’s the kind of thing a surveyor would absolutely have to tell you. As a legal obligation. Surely.

Stensland brushes Clyde’s hair back off his face, looks him in the eyes. “Clyde Logan,” he says sternly, “You would tell me if you had murdered anybody in this house, wouldn’t you?”

“You honestly think I’d bury them in the yard?” Stensland laughs and it shakes through Clyde. He lies down flat again, keeps Clyde’s head cradled close. Clyde’s not too heavy for it, or Stensland likes the feel of it. Whichever. “Give me a bit of credit,” Clyde grumbles, chasing after more of that sweet buzz of laughter. “That’d just be asking for vengeful spirits.” He gets what he wanted, and Stensland must’ve felt him smile at it because he laughs some more, cranes down to kiss the top of his head.

There’s some quiet, then, except for the rainstorm outside. The two of them breathing, settling, Stensland shifting in that way he does when he’s trying not to fart. Clyde served for four years, did that bit of time in county, runs a bar, is not at all unaccustomed to the gamut of other people’s bodily functions. It’s awful nice to have someone be precious about them. While he’s awake, at least.

“It’s just,” Clyde says, the subject still ticking over in his mind. “Houses make noises.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Clicking and tapping and creaking.” He taps gently on Stensland’s chest to demonstrate.

“They do,” Stensland smiles, a note of patient indulgence in his voice. Waiting for Clyde to get to wherever he’s going.

“Plumbing clanks and squeaks and the boiler makes a heap of weird sounds.”

“Right.”

Clyde sighs, not sure why he’s thinking about it. “I guess I never really noticed before. I was at home with Mellie and Jimmy and mom and dad, then I was with my unit, and then Jimmy again.”

“People make people noises,” Stensland observes. He slides his hand down to rest on Clyde’s shoulder.

“I guess.”

“Flat as cheap as mine you get plenty of them. Whether you like it or not.”

“Not here.”

“No,” Stensland says, and his voice has gone all soft like he’s just got what Clyde’s getting at. Clyde’s just about gotten there himself.

“No.”

“I’ve got a couple more days,” Stensland says brightly. His flight back to Seattle is on Friday. “I will make a lot of people noises. Maybe you could record them. Ambient noise, sort of thing. Pipe them through the place, like that easy listening jazz in hotels.”

Clyde shuffles down and turns his reddening face into Stensland’s belly, embarrassed but pleased about it, and isn’t that the oddest thing. He fits his nose into Stensland’s navel, rewarded with a shuddering chuckle, and presses his lips to Stensland’s skin. It’s all soft and clammy and tastes good.

“There are some particular noises,” he says, “that I could do with hearing again.”

“Again already?” Stensland laughs, both his hands coming around to the back of Clyde’s head. Already his voice has got that shivery edge to it. “Christ.”

“Got to make the most of the time,” Clyde says, and he doesn’t mean it to sound like it does. God damn it. Stensland tenses, but with Clyde’s mouth on him whatever he was thinking of saying escapes in a lovely whimper.

 

*

 

“I’m sorry,” Stensland says later, when they’re sweaty and spent and the rain has softened against the windowpanes.

It’s Clyde’s turn to tense up. An adult conversation is necessary, he can concede. He’s not handling the distance between them as well as he’d like, as their roundabout discussion of hauntings and plumbing has made clear to him. He’d hoped they could preserve the glow a little longer tonight, though. Maybe it was stupid. Probably it was.

“About, you know,” Stensland continues, his arm flung over his eyes. “The fart.”

Clyde grins. “These things happen.” Relief, cowardly relief.

“It’s just that I’d been holding one back and then you had me really, really relaxed.”

Clyde tugs Stensland’s arm away, rolling him over onto his side, gathers him into his chest and kisses him. “I’m going to miss you,” he says, really says it, out loud, too loud, his eyes prickling. “When you go.”

“I know,” Stensland whispers, his forehead pressed to Clyde’s. “I mean, I know because I will, as well. Miss you. You know.”

There’s not a lot more to be said about it, or not that either of them can think of. But there it is. Stensland holds on to Clyde, with arms and a leg, and they lie and listen to the house around them shift and settle, to the weather change outside.


	4. constellation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a tumblr prompt "constellation", from ellstra. This was meant to be 3 sentences. It is not.

Clyde comes around in waves, awareness rising up and receding as the tide of sleep goes out, slowly but surely. Sunlight, bright bars of it through blinds. Pillowcase his face’s buried in is some shade of blue or other. Smells of Stensland, his fruity shampoo and his sweat. His mind catches on that, grabs on and gets to remembering things, thinking things, things that start waking everything up for real now. Reminds Clyde he’s not at home, makes his heart lurch and his belly flip. 

Something’s keeping him heavy on the unfamiliar mattress, his arms up and his hands shoved under the pillow, legs sprawled out. The comforter is down around his waist and there’s a weight on the other side of the bed, close though, close enough to tip them toward each other, so they lean where they’re lying. Clyde’s too sleepy to be thinking these things about gravity and orbits and hurtling through space, bodies drawn together by giant forces of nature. Or something. He’s not thinking about comets, bright trails of fire with stupid orbits, orbits that carry them off hundreds of miles away and don’t let ‘em pass by again for so long that the earth might pine away and die like a damn fool. Clyde is going to stop watching Cosmos late at night when he’s alone and can’t sleep and can’t call Stensland because of time zones.

No cause to be thinking about that now. This is no time to get all maudlin making bad metaphors out of indifferent astrophysics. Now, Clyde’s in Stensland’s apartment - his flat - in Seattle, in his bed, not a stitch on, and Stensland is tracing his fingers over Clyde’s back, soft and almost tickly, in quick straight lines and sharp angles. He’s breathing soft and relaxed. Waiting there while Clyde wakes up. 

“What’re you doing?” Clyde asks, muffled by the pillow and the grateful lump in his throat. 

“Sorry. Didn’t want to wake you,” Stensland says, fingertips still sweeping over Clyde’s back, floaty light. “Well, I did. But I didn’t want to be rude about it.” Clyde laughs, stretching a little, in place, and Stensland’s touch follows how his back bows and rises. “Well, I did want to be rude,” Stensland concedes. “But you’re sleeping face down so I couldn’t wake you up as rudely as I might’ve liked.” 

Clyde rolls over, cheeks burning and his eyes still fluttering with sleep, and pulls Stensland down against him chest to chest. The kiss tastes of toothpaste, and Clyde might never get over the bits of manners Stensland tries to have - he’s got one of the kindest souls Clyde has ever known, just natural, but he makes awkward little efforts to be gentlemanly too and they might be the death of Clyde one day. He slips out of bed to clean his teeth in the dead of night in preparation for morning kisses. He trims the hair between his legs, presumably with the little curved pair of nail scissors he keeps on top of his toilet. He held the door for Clyde as they left the airport and Clyde honest-to-god felt his eyes prickle.

Clyde pulls away sooner than he’d like, mindful that he has not been able to avail himself of a toothbrush yet today, and gets a good look at Stensland for the first time that day, all bright and blinding in the stripes of morning sun. He’s grinning, idly pressing something hot and half-hard against Clyde’s thigh, and his fingers are moving again, tracing his jagged lines, joining up the moles on Clyde’s chest, shoulders, throat, darting up to his face and back down again.

“Cassiopeia,” he says, frowning in mock concentration. “Ursa Major.” He keeps tracing but stops talking, and when he looks up Clyde raises a quizzical eyebrow. “Those are the only ones I know,” he confesses, frowning in consternation now. “In films everyone knows loads of constellations and it’s dead romantic and then they do it on the roof on a blanket.”

Huh. “Can you get onto the roof of your building?” 

“Probably up the fire escape.” 

“Do you have an appropriate blanket?” 

Stensland grins wider, zipping his finger up to the mole next to Clyde’s nose and dropping a kiss there instead. “Somewhere, I’m sure.”

“Then I can make up a whole bunch,” Clyde says, reaching up and drawing his own lines along Stensland’s cheekbone, around his harline to the top, down his nose as it wrinkles up with his laughter. “I’ll make it real convincing.”

“Sun’s only just come up,” Stensland points out. “We’re going to have to fill the time somehow until it’s dark enough for stargazing.”

They’ve planned to spend some time seeing the city today, Stensland showing Clyde around. He’s never actually been to the Museum of Flight himself even with how long he’s lived here, and has been getting pretty enthusiastic about the spacecraft they have on display. 

Clyde is destined to be dogged with reminders of the vastness of the universe today, for better or worse. In Stensland’s bed he’s thinking about binary stars. A two-body problem. How they can move around without anything else messing with their orbit, when all they’ve got to worry about is each other. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have never been to Seattle and I am not an astrophysicist anymore than Clyde is. Don't @ me.
> 
> ALSO I still cannot for the life of me remember how we got the idea that Stensland lives in Seattle?? I thought that was just Crash Pad canon but now I cannot find a source at all and I think we just made a collective decision on kylux twitter but I can't find that conversation either and ??? So it's just a thing now, it's too late. I already mentioned it in another ficlet. No takebacks.


End file.
